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June 2011

Pakistan and China are celebrating 60 years of close diplomatic relations. While economic ties are growing, experts agree the Pak-China is a friendship based more on strategic purposes than on business.

The Black Sea is about to lose its historical exclusivity as a Russian-Turkish preserve. A visit by the USA-TRANSCOM commander General Duncan McNabb to Bucharest has sealed the fate of the Black Sea as the latest entry into the chronicles of the "new great game".

Serbian President Boris Tadic said that a pragmatic and flexible approach is required to resolve the deadlock pertaining to the future status of Kosovo, reported the Serbian news agency Tanjug on Thursday.

In the corridors of Brussels’ elegant Stanhope Hotel on Wednesday afternoon, the well-turned-out movers-and-shakers of the European energy world were marvelling at the sizeable budget and high-profile guest list for the event they were attending.

Much has been written about the potential impact that the demise of Osama bin Laden and the possible disintegration of al-Qaida will have on U.S. foreign policy, beginning with the question of whether this will trigger a more rapid disengagement from Afghanistan. But bin Laden's death could also change the foreign policy calculus of other states, notably Russia, which for the past 10 years has promulgated its own version of the global war on terror as a central organizing principle for international affairs.

This year the Shanghai Cooperation Organization celebrates the 10th anniversary from the date of its establishment. The oncoming anniversary is a good reason to assess the solvency of this regional project and alleged scenarios of its development.

The second President of Abkhazia Sergei Bagapsh died on Tuesday, May 29th, 2011 in Moscow. This politician was not simply the second Head of the Republic. No matter how people in and out of Abkhazia treat him, the name of Sergei Bagapsh will be connected by historians with the recognition of state independence of the entity, which survived 14-month armed conflict, long-standing regime of sanctions and existence with “hung up” status.

The OSCE is ready to expand the scope of its co-operation with Turkmenistan in all security dimensions and support the country in implementing its OSCE commitments, said the OSCE
Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, today during his official visit to Turkmenistan, the organization said in a press release.

Things couldn't have been better for Russia's energy giant Gazprom even before news came in over the weekend that curtains could be coming down on one of the keenest battles of the Caspian great game, and Moscow is on a winning streak.

Russian influence is the big gainer from Germany’s decision to stop producing nuclear power. The losers are eastern and central European states including Lithuania, Poland and Hungary, and American influence.

Russia, a quasi-democracy and an imperial power that never quite gave up all of its colonial holdings, has dedicated much of its post-Soviet foreign policy to resisting everything that the NATO intervention in Libya stands for. It shrugs at human rights violators, abhors military intervention, enshrines the sovereign right of states to do whatever they want internally without fear of outside meddling, and above all objects to the West imposing its ideology on others. NATO itself, after all, is a military alliance constructed in opposition to the Soviet Union. But Russian President Dmitri Medvedev took a surprising break from Russian foreign policy precedent on Friday when, in the middle of a G8 summit in France, he declared that Libyan leader Muammar "Qaddafi has forfeited legitimacy" and that Russia plans "to help him go."